More than 100 people are missing in catastrophic bushfires that are ravaging the Australian island of Tasmania.

Some 1,000 people were rescued by boat from the east coast after fires cut off roads, but police say they hold ‘grave fears’ for a number of residents who stayed to defend their homes but have not been heard from.

It comes amid the hottest temperatures ever recorded on the island, peaking at 41.8C (107F) on Friday.

As fires continued to burn yesterday, police and rescue experts began the grim search for bodies in the worst-hit towns of Boomer Bay, where 65 properties were lost, and Dunalley, both in the south-east of the island.

Update 20110220: I’ve added both some older and newer technical links to the S09/O10 information and will continue to do so as good links become available (or I find interesting old ones).

The “Tribe-said/Team-said” BS seems to be simmering down some and a couple of blogs are looking under the hood to see what all the fuss is about (technically) in the Steig 2009 / ODonnell 2010 kerfluffle.

As far as the blog recap goes, lets just say that Dr Steig was voted off the Island and leave it at that. He follows in the footsteps of Dr Schmidt last week and Dr Trenberth the week before that.

A simple and coherent framework for partitioning uncertainty in multi-model climate ensembles is presented. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used to decompose a measure of total variation additively into scenario uncertainty, model uncertainty and internal variability.

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. -H.P. Lovecraft